This is a fun exploration/treasure-hunting game that I had never heard of.

The island that you are on is made up of modular tiles that are randomly placed and nobody knows where the treasures are. Each treasure starts with a clue card in play that narrows down where that treasure is (e.g: “not in a forest” or “next to a river hex”).

The randomly created island

On your turn, in addition to moving around the island collecting stuff, you play a card to one of the treasures that will narrow down its location even further. You then will be getting a “share” of that treasure when it’s finally discovered.

It’s a neat mechanism, where you have to decide whether you want to help an opponent find a treasure because at least you’ll be getting some of it if you place a card down.

August was the month of the Dragonflight convention (38th edition, see you there on the 39th maybe?) so it’s to be expected that I would get some new games in.

But surprisingly, not as many as I expected. I did get a couple of new ones in there, but we played a lot of the old mainstays, which is also never a bad thing. Still, three of my six new games were played there, and I also played for a second time one of my August new ones.

I always like a good mix, and August was definitely one of those (though there would be one more new game in there if it hadn’t been aborted on Turn 3 for reasons).

It was a pretty lean month in June for new games. There were a few that I played for a second time, but that doesn’t count (or so the mean-looking guy behind me holding the truncheon says).

Only three new games in June, which is a pretty poor record. I will have to do better in July (he says, having played two non-new games on the first weekend of the month)

Still, the three that I did play were very good, with only one that I’m lukewarm on, and that could be because Martin Wallace is a sadist (I kid, though I wouldn’t be surprised if when he makes his kids clean their rooms, there is a way they could do it where they’re stuck doing it for months and can’t come out until they’re done).

This one has to be my favourite new game of May, though some of the others are damned close.

In this one, each player is trying to help build various monuments in ancient Egypt and get the most prestige/glory/whatever the heck they call it in this game (it would be nice if games picked one name for victory points and kept it).

The game is interesting because each player is building on the same thing. Players have their own stone quarries that they get stone from, then put on ships that will be going to four of the five locations. One of the locations, the Market, gets you cards that you can either save for later, you have to use immediately, or get you end-game victory points.

The others have various ways to place your stones to get the most victory points, but stones are unloaded from boats from front to back, so where you have your stones on the boats can be very important.

And you don’t even have to have stones on a boat to ship it to one of the locations, so you can seriously screw with somebody if you really want (though that does waste a turn where you’re not getting any benefit, so it’s not something to do willy-nilly).

I love that these decisions on what to do on your turn (get stone from your quarry, place a stone on a boat, send a boat to a location, or play a blue card) can be quite difficult sometimes.

And it’s such a simple game! Non-gamers can easily play it (one of the players I introduced it to, and who loved it, thought another fairly simple game looked way too complex, so that tells you something). It teaches fast, it plays fast (40 minutes easily), and it’s interesting.